Week 2 Habit Stacking Challenge

 I have a feeling I might not get on here as much as I'd like the next few days.  So I will outline this week's Habit Stacking items.  

Day 8: Metabolism Magic. Metabolism boosting foods.  Non-spicy foods: green tea(which is in my Truvy drinks I have daily). beans, ginger, salmon, yogurt, chicken, cinnamon.  (yogurt and chicken are almost daily items for me. Certain spicy foods are considered metabolism boosting: hot sauce, chili peppers, turmeric, cayenne.  I'm not a big fan of spicy foods. 

Day 9: Caffeine check.  Caffeine does act as a stimulant and help with boosting metabolism, increase fat burning, and reducing appetite, but in excess amounts it acts as a stressor.  In general, the only caffeine I consume is what is in my Truvy drink supplement. 

Day 10: 3-minute mobility.  We need to address mobility work daily, even if it's only 3-5 minutes a day!  Foam rolling, Stretching, and activation exercises. You can focus on a different body part/area each day.   This is something I need to work on!  On my non-workout days, I tend to not do anything.  But as I'm getting older and more aches and joint pains, especially with a physical job, I need to really add this to my daily routine.  It needs to become a daily habit.  

Day 11: Probiotics and Prebiotics.  Probiotics help bring down inflammation in our bodies.  Probiotic rich foods include, yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha.  prebiotic rich foods include, oats, garlic, onion, asparagus, bananas, apples, mushrooms.  I regularly eat yogurt daily, onion bananas, apples and some mushrooms.

Day 12: Eat the Rainbow.  The goal is to eat as many different varieties and colors of veggies and fruits and berries.  red, yellow/orange, white/tan, green, blue/purple. Foods I eat most often with color are, broccoli, bell peppers, butternut squash, mushrooms, bananas, onion, blueberries and strawberries.  I am starting to add more spinach and sweet potato. 

Day 13: Sleep!  This one I might struggle with.  Being in peri-menopause, I feel my sleep is very disrupted as a result of hot flashes, dry mouth, etc. I wake up then can't get back to sleep right away.  Usually waking up 3 or more times a night!  It is suggested to have a nightly sleep routine.  1. Set a bedtime(this can be difficult on some nights as I may have to work overtime at work which really alters my sleep schedule.)  2. About 30 minutes to an hour it is suggested to do a "brain dump". Write down anything stressful from the day or concerns or deadlines for the next day. Get out all of the thoughts swirling around in my head.  Then write out 3 Positive things from the day.  3. Then, Breathe and relax.  Do the breathing technique from Day 7. I have a journal book I can possibly start doing that in.  I used to write in a journal years ago.  

Day 14: Portion Distortion.  If we're not weighing or measuring out our foods, we may not be staying within our caloric needs.  It is suggested to use our hands as a guide to "measuring" our foods. Protein=palm(4.5 palms per day), carbohydrates=fist(3 per day for starch, 6 per day for non-starch), fats=tip of thumb(3 per day).

I feel like for someone who may be struggling with any of the Habit Stacking items, focus on mastering one before going on to the next habit.  Or at least, work on the 2 easiest ones so you can build up some confidence in your ability to stick with each habit.  

In actuality, these are habits we need to master in order to reach any fitness goal.  You can't possibly stick to any of these habits if your mindset isn't right.  Work on believing in yourself and telling yourself that this IS worth it and that you CAN do this!  Some of this is hard if you haven't mastered it yet.  If you keep falling backwards and these things haven't become a HABIT then you will eventually go backwards...like I have so many times.  This can't be an "all or nothing" journey.  Because then you will fail and go backwards every time you "give up"(the 'nothing' part).  I have to find ways of sticking with the things I don't like or find ways to make it work.(tracking vs portion size guide). 

Day 3-7 Habit Stacking Challenge

 It seems I've already slacked in this Habit Stacking Challenge.  

I have to get in the frame of mind that I'm doing this(writing on this blog) for me.  It is to get my thoughts out of my mind.  And to try as much as I possibly can to be accountable to myself for doing the simple things...the daily habits that will get me to my best self. 

Day 3-7 of the Habit Stacking Challenge. 

Day 3: focusing on getting several different sources of protein.  Protein is the top of the list  of most important nutrients/macros to consume.  My most frequent sources of protein are chicken, beef, yogurt, ground turkey, and eggs. also protein powders on workout days.

Day 4: Steps!  Walking is one of the best parasympathetic exercises we can do to help lower cortisol levels in our bodies.  helps with de-stressing and recovery.  I feel like I already get lots of steps in at work, but I don't think that really counts towards de-stressing/cortisol reduction. 

Day 5: Fiber Fuelin'  It is recommended for women to get 21-25 grams of fiber daily!!  Something I need to start tracking.  (men need 30-38 grams/day)  Foods high in fiber are: blueberries, strawberries,raspberries, apples, bananas, broccoli, black beans(cooked), oats, almonds.  I usually put a mixed berry blend in my protein shakes. and I'm going to start trying to eat an apple a day.  I also have almonds on hand, too.

Day 6: Diet Disruptors.  Certain foods disrupt your metabolism while others help boost it.

I feel like I have been doing fairly well with avoiding disruptors (commercially bake goods, processed meats, fried foods, alcohol).  "Booster" foods are foods with antioxidants, omega 3s, and prebiotic contents(berries, dark chocolate, salmon, tuna, walnuts, fish oil, garlic, onions, mushrooms).

Day 7: Pause and Recharge - TLC time.  Rest and recovery are key for our bodies and our mind.  Breathing exercises help with oxygen replenishment and helps in relaxing us.  Doing a 4-7-8 breathing exercise helps calm the mind and body.  (inhale 4 seconds, hold breath 7 seconds, exhale 8 seconds)

Day 2 Habit Stacking Challenge: Fluid Fire

 Today's Habit Stacking Challenge protocol is "Fluid Fire"...Water!  Staying Hydrated!  It is recommended to consume 0.7 X your body weight!  So, for me, that would be near 125 oz of Water!  I have two 40 oz water bottles that I filled up for work and also drank 40 oz this morning before work.  So that gave me a total of 120 oz for the day.  And I usually drink water throughout the night as I usually wake up in the night with a very dry mouth several times a night!! ugh. It is recommended that you urine should be the color of light lemonade. Any darker and you'd be considered dehydrated. Any lighter and you would be considered low in electrolytes. I think 120 ish oz a day is doable. 

Today was a rest day for my workouts.  I will be doing a 3-4 days per week workout schedule.  (monday, Wednesday, Friday, and possibly a Saturday)
I did take my measurements this morning and weighed in.  I'm just not ready to share those numbers yet.  Needless to say, I was very disappointed and not happy with where I am and how far back I've put myself.

Day 1. Habit Stack Challenge: Mindset Matters Most

 To start off the year 2024 I am participating in a "Habit Stacking Challenge".  Basically it's to focus on some key Habits that we need to succeed.  It's not the Goal that will get you to where you want to go, but your Habits!!  If we don't establish Habits in our life, we'll just fall back into old patterns and Habits we've been repeating over and over again most of our lives.  So often, we say, "that's just the way I am," when in actuality it is just a Habit we've repeated so many times we don't even think about what we are doing anymore.  For example, falling into a pattern of eating pizza and other easy foods, because we've become so accustomed to those easy habits in life we don't have to think about.  That even goes for the way we've been thinking and believing about things.  

Whether we believe we can or we can't, we're right!  Ultimately, everything comes back to our mindset because our mindset will dictate the actions we take! 

So, for Day 1: Mindset Matters Most, it is to come up with my own 3 quotes that will help create that mindset for success. 

1. Push yourself, because No One else is going to do it for you!  I chose this because when I am home in my own world, none of my fellow fitness comrades are there to tell be to get out in the garage for my workout or in the kitchen with me making sure I'm eating the right foods that will help me reach my health/fitness goals.  No one is there looking over my shoulder telling me what to and not to eat.  I have to do this on my own!  Even my husband will not truly make me chose the right things for my goals.  Nor will he tell me to get out in the garage to do my workout. I HAVE to make those choices for myself!! 

2.  You Either Quit, or Keep Going! They Both Hurt!  I saw this quote recently on Facebook and felt it was very appropriate and true!!  I feel like I've done both!! At different times over the years I've done both of these things.  I've kept going when I didn't really feel like it. I've also just kind of quit many times over the years, too.  Quitting Hurts!! Because I know in my heart that I should just keep going, but I don't.  And then I feel bad about myself and my self-confidence lowers and I get upset and beat myself up for having not kept going, for whatever reason.  Sometimes it feels so much easier to just not put in the effort.  But in actuality, It Hurts!! Because then all I worked so hard to accomplish is all wasted away and fall backwards in so many ways.  Now I have to worked even harder to get back to where I was!!  The "pain" of Keep Going is the "pain" of discipline.  The Pain of doing something, even though I don't "feel like it" in that moment. The "pain" of keep going is to make some sacrifices for things I might have to give up for a short time or the time it takes to work towards my goal.  

3. Act As If...Right now I feel fat and weak and self-defeated...because of #2 above...the quitting part.  The past year I have acted as if I was lazy and procrastinated.  I acted as if I didn't have any motivation or drive to BE healthy or strong and fit. My mindset has shifted to a "I give up" attitude and self-limiting belief that I can't "keep going".  I've been acting as if I don't believe in myself and that I don't believe that I can Keep Going and that I'll just Quit yet again.   I NEED to change that belief and way of thinking.  I need to Act As If I CAN do this and that I won't  fall backwards yet again.  I have to Act As If I am Strong and Act As If this is truly a lifestyle and not just something I do for a few months and then give up.  Act As If I am a winner in my own life and a winner at achieving my goals.  

"Discipline is Built by Creating Habits we Repeat"

Day 1: 01/01/24 "before" pic:

New Year 2024. The Journey Continues. My "Origin Story"

 Here we are yet again at the start of a new year!  New year, new goals, new month, new week.... 

As part of this continued journey and sharing it here for anyone who chooses to read my words, I am going to go through some documenting of sharing my journey by following some prompting of doing some internal work. I'll be following prompted questions that I will answer in response. In the following week I hope to answer the questions in regards to "Where I am now" and "Where I want to go" in this   upcoming year and beyond.  

Today, the question is "What is your Origin Story"?  Every hero starts from somewhere.  a place they don't want to be. So what's the first thing you do?  You set a "goal." You set a destination. But you can't map out a plan until you know where you're actually starting from. So before diving into the how of achieving results, I must take a hard look at where I am currently. My "origin story."  Put in all of my frustrations and struggles. Highlighting what I do not like about where I am now.  Sharing so I can remember why I'm looking to make these changes in the coming year.

I feel like to reflect on where I am currently, I need to look back to the very beginning and all the struggles I've had along the way. Plus, I don't know where you may have jumped into my life in regards to my journey. I can only assume you know nothing about me and where I came from. I will try to keep this brief as possible.  Sometimes to understand where you are now, you need to reflect on where you started from and what got you to where you are today.

I grew up in a small farming community.  I lived out in farm country. Growing up as a child my family did not have a TV like most other families did.  So, as a result, most of my childhood was experienced through activities not associated with sitting on the couch watching TV.  I am the 3rd of 4 kids(at the time), I had an older brother and a younger brother, and an older sister. Most of my childhood memories are of playing with my brothers mostly.  We loved most ball sports; basketball, football, baseball, running in track and volleyball(mostly just me), also riding our bikes.  We were always told to go outside to play. So we were all basically pretty active as children and into our teenage high school years playing in said sports.  As a family, we had a large garden that my parents would grow and harvest every year.  We always had a plentiful supply of fresh veggies and even chickens for us to eat.  We were basically eating "organic" before "organic" was a "thing".  Jump forward a few years, into college, I also played basketball and volleyball through my 4+ years of college. I did gain the "freshmen 15" lbs. and that was basically the beginnings of my lifelong journey of yo-yo dieting/losing and gaining weight over the years.  In my early years of marriage and being pregnant or nursing four kids during a 10 year time span, I gained over 90 lbs!  Two years after my youngest child was born I had had enough of feeling insecure and not liking who I had become. I decided to embark on a weight loss journey to get back to the figure of my youth.  It took me 18 months to lose over 90 lbs! I was on a mission!  In a way, I was obsessed with reaching my goal weight!  It was then in 2006 that I started blogging and documenting my weight loss journey.  My original blog has since been deleted and removed and started this one a "few" years ago.  After my initial weight loss I have been struggling up and down with those last 15-20 lbs.  My weight had gotten down to 145 lbs at my lowest weight(back to my high school weight!) But over the past 10 years since my weight has fluctuated up to as high as 177 lbs! I've done several "challenges" over the years since where I've gotten my weight down to 150 lbs and then to just slack off my discipline and gained back up again in the low 170's. I never thought of it as such, but I have ended up the classic yo-yo dieter!  I'd do a program great for a few months, or even at best 10 months, to slowly gain that weight back on having fallen back into my old eating habits and lack of consistent workouts.  I've repeated this same story over and over again saying I didn't want to do that again, but yet....here I am...back in the low 170's!!  And NOW I am in my mid 50's and in peri-menopause phase of my life, which seems to make it harder. I actually did a great program last year (March 2022 - August 2022) and did amazing!  I felt like I was getting my strength back and got my weight back down to 150 lbs!!  I was so proud of myself!  I felt really good!  Then, I strained my lower back and it's been downhill ever since.  I stopped tracking my calories/macros.  I reverted back to my old habits...pizza, ice cream, alcohol!  Now I feel weaker than ever!! More flabbiness. All my clothes are tight!!  I just feel horrible that I've done this YET AGAIN!!  I'm in this literal cycle of up and down and then beating myself up for it yet again!  I've gone from being so proud of myself to hating where I am yet again. It's clear that I have not mastered the skill of "maintenance."  

So...this is a brief summary of the past 17 years! I want to FINALLY learn from my mistakes. I want to learn to FINALLY make my fitness a lifestyle and NOT a Yo-Yo cycle!  Can I dive into my frustrations and struggles and learn from them?! Can I finally see the pattern of success to only self-sabotage. Can I break that chain?  

Where am I now?

What habits and routines am I doing daily right now? I feel like I am a person who likes things easy.  I don't want to have to overthink things or worry about what I'm going to have to eat or how much time it's going to take to do something.  That's why it's been so easy to opt for pizza and ice cream and other easy frozen meals.  I did great with the macro/calorie tracking last year.  I am/have been an "all or nothing" type of person.  With all the programs and meal plans/tracking I've done over the years I'd do great until the "end" of challenge/program then I'd go back to my old ways of not really paying attention to those details. I think I felt like that by not continuing to track that I wouldn't know how bad I was doing and I'd feel less "self-guilt" for not making the better choices. "If I didn't log it, it didn't happen"...right?!?!  um no... but maybe that was my unconscious justification.  I reached my goal...I can slack off now.  umm. no.  I hurt my back, so why keep track anymore?!?   I feel like those were my "unconscious" justifications.  

My continued frustrations are that now all my pants are too tight! I get mentally overwhelmed with having to start all over again and trying to figure out all the "right" things to eat and how much and making sure I'm getting enough water, protein, vitamins, etc.  I really hated having to weigh and measure all my food.  I hate having to start all over again, not feeling like I've learned anything the past 17 years! I just want my fit body I had even just a little over a year ago! Now I have to go through all that struggle of feeling weak and having to work my ass off just to get back to where I was. 

My current lifestyle is 'what's easy?' I over think life enough as it is, I don't want to have to overthink what am I going to eat or what workout to do.  I'm also trying to navigate what is best for me in my perimenopause journey. I feel so overwhelmed with what I should be doing.  I do get "paralyzed" by all the choices and "should do's".  

If you've made it this far in my rambling, I applaud you!  I'm just throwing it all out there and what is going through my mind. This journey is many years in the making up to this point.  But I feel like I want to start afresh and to overthink or worry about what I did or did not do in the past!  I want to have the mindset that tomorrow, in the New Day, the New Year, that it is truly a Day 1. Let all my past failures and success be just part of my past story!  What happened 15 years ago, what happened yesterday doesn't matter and even compute in the evaluation of what I can do or will do in the future!  I want to start a clean slate like I've never done this before!

2023 Recap

 Here we are at the end of yet another year! How does each year seem to go by so fast?? I started off ok, but then quickly slacked off with the onset of the wrist tendonitis.  I did finally recover from the tendonitis in the right wrist.  But as this year is ending I'm now suffering tendonitis in my left wrist!! The orthopedic Dr recommends surgery, but only after just giving me a cortisone shot which only lasted a mere few weeks until pain returned.  The cortisone shot did not resolve the cause of the issue.  So I will try to resolve it on my own with my own research on different techniques and protocols of rest, pressure point massage, stretching, strengthening of arm muscles, etc. None of which the ortho Dr suggested. He just jumped right to "you need surgery because cortisone didn't help". 

So as this year has gone, I've completely gone backwards with my weight. I've lost track of tracking my macros and most nights opt for the easy way out...pizza or something simple. My workouts have been sporadic, at best.  I am ending the year at around 170 lbs. Feeling old and achy and suffering symptoms of perimenopause(hot flashes, insomnia, mood swings, depression, anxiety, body/joint aches(I'm sure my wrist tendonitis has a lot to do with perimenopause), etc. 

I will make a new blog entry to hopefully start the documentation of the continuing of this lifelong fitness journey for me. So stay tuned to the next entry. 

 

 

Easing back. March update

Brutal honesty... peri-menopause is really beating me down. From the physical aches to the mental depression and sleep-deprived nights from insomnia to night sweats. I do take supplements to try to combat some of those symptoms.  Sometimes it seems to work, other times not. Many times I find my mental attitude of "just fuck it" sometimes wins. I've had this battle on/off my whole life. It really does take continuous ongoing work to combat those negative thoughts, just like working on your body takes a continuous consistent effort. 

The other night I was seeing my memories on Facebook of some of my fitness journey postings. I've basically been repeating the same lose/gain of the same 10-15 lbs over the past 10 or so years. Each time I've lost that weight I always think it'll be the last and I'll do good and maintain that weight loss....just to end back up where I was before. (@165-170#) At 53 years old and in peri-menopause this time around I'm really struggling mentally. I am so discouraged and in a depressing state of returning back up in weight again...and so quickly. I'm literally back to where I was literally a year ago. 

How can I turn it all around again? 

I've started new workout programming. It's a tempo based routine. I just finished a 2nd week of an acclimation phase. This week should start increasing the weights to begin building and challenging the muscles. 

I do feel I have to accept that I won't get back to my goal of 150# by my beach vacation the end of May. I just haven't gotten my calories down and disciplined enough. I kind of just feel I don't want to go back to the detailed macro tracking. Maybe if I can just input my favorite recipes that meet my protein/calorie needs i couod just rotste through some of my favorites and not feel I'm having to stress over hitting my macros every day. I do know I tend to get caught up in mindless snacking. 

Some days I can't stand where I'm back to. Some days I just feel like quitting. But I walys come back to the thought and belief that muscle is the fountain of youth. And I feel I just can't give up. I just want my muscles and strength back and to not feel old and plump. I know I go back and forth between saying one thing but yet doing the opposite. 

Maybe I need to get back to writing down positive affirmations. Just thinking about something doesn't seem to make things happen. I need to instill belief in my inner being that I can and will do what needs to be done to restore my muscles and strength. I need to keep going, no matter what. Let consistency win. 

I know I've probably babbled on and on, but if no one is reading this blog it doesn't really matter and it's a way of getting thoughts out of my head.